A debate rages in the halls of universities as well as in Congress and national security agencies about whether the United States should enact new “administrative” or “preventive” detention laws – laws that would authorize the detention of suspected terrorists outside the normal criminal justice system.

Advocates argue that criminal law alone is inadequate to combat transnational terrorist networks spanning continents and waging violence at a level of intensity and sophistication previously achievable only by powerful states, but that the law of war is inadequate to protect liberty. Jack Goldsmith and Neal Katyal, for example, call on “Congress to establish a comprehensive system of preventive detention that is overseen by a national security court.”

Critics warn that new administrative detention laws will undermine liberty, and they assert that criminal law already provides the government with ample tools to arrest, charge, and prosecute suspected terrorists. Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner writes that preventive detention “cuts the heart out of any concept of human liberty.”

It is well known that the American Revolution was spurred in large part by the colonists’ reaction to King George’s use of the military to enforce English laws in the colonies. After the colonists had become sufficiently disgruntled by the increasingly martial measures imposed by the King, the drafters of the Declaration of Independence listed among its central complaints the tendencies of the English Crown “to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

Just as King Charles had been beheaded in 1649 for violating what became a fundamental Anglo- American value – that soldiers are respected for defeating enemies of the state but are never to be used against their civilian neighbors – King George lost the colonies when he employed troops to control disorderly civilians.

Unpopular wars inevitably lead to sharp conflicts between Presidents and the press over the control of secret information. National security secrets find their way into print because government officials assigned to carry out questionable policies leak secret documents to reporters. The government responds to publication with threats of civil legal action and criminal prosecution.

The Vietnam War produced the Pentagon Papers case, in which the government unsuccessfully sought to stop publication of a classified history of the war. More recently, national security cases have led to jail for some reporters, threats of jail for others, and warnings of criminal prosecution for still others.1 These cases, taken together, threaten to criminalize newsgathering of national security secrets.

Law Enforcement as a Counterterrorism ToolIn January 2011, Congress enacted legislation prohibiting the use offederal funds to transfer to the United States any individuals currentlydetained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Among ...3,748 views | by David S. Kris | posted on 06/26/2011